The signs are not good for smartphone sales as Gartner reports a 1.7 percent decline in Q2. Bucking the trend among the top five markets are China and Brazil. China clocked up 101 million smartphone sales, up 0.5 percent year on year in Q2, to maintain its top position. Brazil performed slightly better with 1.3 percent growth, thanks to its gradual economic recovery.
India registered a 2.3 percent decline to 35.7 million smartphones, mainly due to slowing consumer upgrades from feature phones to smartphones.
Gartner expects global smartphone sales to remain weak for the rest of the year.
“Demand for high-end smartphones has slowed at a greater rate than demand for mid-range and low-end smartphones. To try to boost smartphone replacements, we’ve seen manufacturers bringing premium features such as multi-lens front/back cameras, bezel-less displays and large batteries from their flagship smartphones into lower-priced models,” said Anshul Gupta, Senior Research Director of Gartner.
Among the smartphone vendors, Huawei achieved surprisingly strong sale with 16.5 percent increase despite the US ban. On the other hand, Apple continued its slide, selling just over 38 million iPhones in Q2, a drop of 13,8 percent year on year.
“Too few incremental benefits are preventing existing iPhone users from replacing their smartphones,” said Gupta.
Entelechy Asia 